1992 Los Angeles Riots: The LAPD Pullback From Florence and Normandy

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On April 29, 1992, as the city erupted, the Los Angeles police command post had no cell phones, too few radios and not even a television. This episode traces the pressures that built beforehand: Chief Daryl Gates's Operation Hammer sweeps and battering rams on suspected drug houses, the Christopher Commission's findings on excessive force, deindustrialization and crack cocaine in South Central, and tension between Black residents and Korean American store owners. In March 1991, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot by storekeeper Soon Ja Du, whose sentence was five years' probation, community service and a $500 fine despite a jury recommendation of 16 years. The trial of the officers who beat Rodney King was moved to Simi Valley, and the defense played George Holliday's video frame by frame until the jury acquitted.

The Webster Commission found incompetence rather than design: a million-dollar overtime budget went unused, many patrol captains were at a seminar in Ventura, and no extra officers were held over at the 3 p.m. shift change. At 71st and Normandy, Lieutenant Michael Moulin ordered his outnumbered officers to withdraw, and they regrouped at an RTD bus depot at 54th and Arlington while crowds at Florence and Normandy pulled motorists from their cars. Zoey Tur's helicopter broadcast it live. Koreatown merchants armed themselves on rooftops, and George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act. The hosts lay out rival readings of the riots as rebellion or criminality and compare the LAPD of 1992 with the force at the 2025 Los Angeles immigration protests.

• Bobby Green, Lei Yuille, Titus Murphy and Terri Barnett saw Reginald Denny's beating on TV and drove him to the hospital.
• Reverend Bennie Newton shielded Fidel Lopez with his own body and his Bible.
• Smoke from thousands of fires forced controllers at LAX to reroute flights over the Pacific.
• Over 2,300 Korean-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed, about $400 million in losses, remembered as sa-i-gu.
• The toll reached 63 dead, over 2,000 injured and about $1 billion in property damage.